Elucidating the Transference Using the Child’s Dream

ABSTRACT

There is generally wide acceptance that transference develops in child and adolescent psychoanalytic treatments. The interpretation of the transference is an important aspect of analytic technique, leading to both insight and clinical improvement. This article uses vignettes to demonstrate how interpretation of a child’s dreams may help the analyst and the young patient understand the patient’s feelings about the analyst, and may ultimately provide the patient with transformative insights regarding the important people in his life.

Notes

¹ The current controversies in child analysis seem to “cluster around the following issues among others: the role of interpretive versus non-interpretive techniques; the function of the analyst as a transference object; the function of the analyst as a developmental object, new object and real object; and the function of play” (Auchincloss and Samberg, 2012). These issues, excluding the function of play, are also the current controversies in adult analysis.

² A discussion of another aspect of this dream appears in Karush, R.K. (2014), Postscripts: Reflections on the post-termination phase. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 68.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruth K. Karush

Ruth K. Karush, M.D., is the Dean of Education and a Child, Adolescent and Adult Training and Supervising Analyst at The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.